CEAL and UNC Release Guide on Person-Centered Care in Assisted Living

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The Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), recently released a report on seminal person-centered attributes and indicators, developed and approved unanimously by CEAL through an initiative funded by The Commonwealth Fund.

“The creation of person-centered attributes along with measurable indicators developed by diverse national assisted living experts is critically important to inform the Affordable Care Act (ACA) legislation,” said Sheryl Zimmerman, Ph.D., Kenan Professor and Co-Director of the Program on Aging, Disability, and Long-Term Care at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC. “They clarify the distinction between the ACA’s mandated person-centered practices as opposed to institutional practices that will no longer be funded by CMS.”

CEAL states its belief that person-centered outcomes are a “major underpinning” when it comes to advantageous assisted living practices and care; if a service plan and the way it’s carried out is focused on person-centeredness, then generally it will be able to carry out the basic guarantees of assisted living that include maximizing privacy, autonomy, and choice; helping to foster meaningful life, engagement, and quality of care; and supporting meaningful access to the surrounding community.

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The next step for CEAL and UNC, says the Center, is their plan to conduct field research to test and validate the person-centered attributes and assisted living indicators detailed in their report. CEAL calls these “important and timely steps” that are necessary in order to confirm that assisted living practices and national and state policies have a strong foundation of evidence-based information.

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